Long chain alcohols having about 8 to 28 carbon atoms and their derivatives have considerable commercial importance in a variety of applications. These include consumer products such as detergents, soaps, personal care products, drug products, as well as industrial products such as surfactants, degreasers, industrial cleaners, agricultural adjuvants, textile processing chemicals, waxes, mining chemicals, oilfield chemicals, metal working fluids and additives for lubricating oils and greases.
There are several commercial routes employed for obtaining alcohol molecules of this size:                1. Naturally occurring fats and oils of either animal or vegetable origin can be cracked and refined to yield predominantly straight chain alcohols with even carbon numbers.        2. Ethylene can be oligomerized by the Ziegler process yielding straight chain alcohols with even carbon numbers.        3. Linear olefins can be hydroformylated to alcohols of both odd and even carbon numbers. Hydroformylation introduces branching, primarily at the 2-carbon site. Depending on the catalyst used and the process conditions employed the degree of branching can be controlled from as low as 18% to 50% or more.        4. Short chain olefins, (e.g. C3 or C4) can be oligomerized to yield branched olefins with 2 or more branches per molecule. These branched olefins can then be hydroformylated to yield highly branched alcohols.        
These alcohols are also characterized by the presence of quaternary carbon atoms within their molecular backbones.
These alcohols are produced by any one of commercial processes, such as the oxo or hydroformylation of long chain olefins. Typical long chain alcohols are the commercially available NEODOL® alcohols made by Shell Chemical Company, the EXXAL® alcohols available from Exxon Chemical, and the LIAL® alcohols available from Sasol.
However, there remains a need for suitable alcohol and alcohol derivatives for particular applications